After reading an article in the Post Millennial about an Ontario School Board requiring all its new principals and vice principals to read the book, “me and white supremacy,” I decided as a retired school administrator I’d give it a shot as well. I was curious to see how new school administrators were being indoctrinated by their employers today and how I would receive this sort of ‘training.’
According to Robin Diangelo who wrote the book’s forward; “This book is a gift of compassion from a brilliant Black woman willing to guide you through a deep examination of white racial conditioning in service of your liberation.”
Wow- I didn’t know I was in need of liberation from my white racial conditioning. But if Robin Diangelo says I am imprisoned by my conditioning it must be true!??? Robin Diangelo seems to have no problem painting me as a bigot in need of liberation from my own unreasonable beliefs and opinions.
There is one problem with her approach - Robin Diangelo doesn’t know me or anything about my experiences growing up. According to Diangelo, just because I was born ‘white’ I’m guilty by association of all the racism that happened in the past and is happening now and will happen in the future; unless I accept this ‘gift of compassion from a brilliant Black woman.’
Any thinking person will recognize the glaring logical fallacy that we are asked to swallow ‘hook, line and sinker.’ I am being judged guilty by association. My crime is being born white. This is a nasty form of abuse; “ [the] Guilt by association fallacy A type of abusive ad hominem in which one person attacks a second person’s associates in order to discredit the person and thereby his argument.”
This kind of prejudging me is in itself a form of racial prejudice; “When people hold prejudicial attitudes toward others, they tend to view everyone who fits into a certain group as being ‘all the same.’ They paint every individual who holds particular characteristics or beliefs with a very broad brush and fail to really look at each person as a unique individual.” (Wendy Gould, What is prejudice?)
I would be gullible to accept this kind of argument against my character.
Lets take a look at one claim of this ‘brilliant Black woman.’ According to Layla Saad; “This book is a one-of-a-kind personal antiracism tool structured to help people with white privilege understand and take ownership of their participation in the oppressive system of white supremacy. It is designed to help them take responsibility for dismantling the way this system manifests, both within themselves and within their communities. The primary force that drives my work is to become a good ancestor.” (Welcome to the work, Dear Reader)
Yet, Layla Saad has benefited by the very system she seeks to have me participate in dismantling. Layla Saad has been the recipient of many blessings from the very system she now wants to help destroy; She probably has more white privilege than me!
Louise Perry exposes this darker side of Layla Saad’s ‘white privilege;’
Saad’s parents met while studying in Britain, where she was born. When Saad was fifteen, the family moved to Qatar because her father was “head-hunted for a job” and Saad completed her schooling at a British private school in Qatar before returning to the UK briefly to study law. She is now permanently settled in Doha withher husband and children.
In other words, Saad has no family connection to either America orWest Africa. Nevertheless, her Instagram profile reveals a fascination with the black American experience, particularly the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. Photos of foreign holidays and new clothes are interspersed with quotes from Martin Luther King, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and other famous Americans, and Saad includes herself by appealing to a kind of Pan-African identity. . . .
Saad has never once commented on crimes, either historic or modern, committed in the country in which she has spent almost all her adult life. Although Qatar officially outlawed slavery in 1952, there are estimated to be more enslaved people now living in the country than in almost any other worldwide and the Qatari government’s tolerance for the practice — which I have written about previously in these pages — has led the UN to threaten international sanctions
It is quite possible that Saad is not directly implicated in any of these abuses. But her silence on the subject of this ongoing form ofslavery is striking, given her own commitment to the idea of collective guilt.
Source: https://unherd.com/thepost/layla-saad-a-curious-case-of-false-identification-with-black-america/
Layla Saad spent her childhood in a culture that provided her the benefits of ‘first world’ education and security. Layla Saad lives‘high on the hog’ in a society that permits enslaved people within its borders. And she wants the dismantle the very oppressive systems that blessed her with a good education and is blessing her with a great ‘white privilege’ lifestyle now. She seeks to cut off the very systems that benefited her and could benefit the future of young girls in the world including her grand children and their children. What kind of an ancestor does that make her?
Layla Saad could be described as either very gullible herself or a hypocrite. I would describe her as an opportunist cashing in on a very nasty race based business where people are pitted against each other on the basis of skin colour.
So far I don’t have any desire to help her destroy or dismantle anything.
Better not look for a job in the Ontario public school system.
More to come.